A dark underworld. Treacherous fates. Sexual innuendos. Improvised alcohol use. All performed by an LBHS cast that gave it everything they had. Was Hadestown: Teen Edition a good production? Yes, but.
Hadestown is a modern take on two Greek myths intertwined. Hades, King of the Underworld, falls in love with the beautiful Persephone, daughter of Demeter, godess of the harvest. Knowing that Demeter would never consent to Persephone as his wife, he kidnaps Persephone and makes her Queen of the Underworld.
Grief stricken, Demeter refuses to make crops grow unless her daughter is returned. Zeus, who couldn’t let the world perish, orders Hades to return Persephone, but the latter was tricked into tasting food from the underworld- three pomegranite seeds, to be exact- which condemned her from ever seeing the light of day.
Zeus took pity on the mother-daughter duo and ruled Persephone had to spend one month with Hades for each seed she ate. Those three months became the season of winter, when Demeter is in mourning for her daughter. When Persephone is released, Demeter makes the crops grow again, giving us spring.
In Hadestown, this story is intertwined with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice is bitten by a snake as she dances in a meadow following her wedding to Orpheus. Like all mortal souls in Greek mythology, she goes to the underworld, ruled by Hades and his wife, Persephone. Orpheus, playing his beautiful lyre, gains entry into the underworld and pleads with Hades to return his wife. Orpheus’ music is so beautiful, Hades agrees on the condition that Persephone walk behind him out of the underworld and Orpheus not look back. As he approaches the light of day, Orpheus begins to doubt whether Eurydice is indeed behind him. He turns around, catching a glimpse of her before she is returned to the underworld, this time forever.
Hadestown is performed entirely as a musical. The songs are catchy; the story line poignant. Orpheus’ heart-felt falsetto requires a deeply confident teenager and sophomore Orlo Parkinson delivered. Junior Nick Leon was eerily believable as cold-hearted Hades. LBHS Drama Company Director Kelly Grayum set a bar and the cast met it. The problem, as always, is in the repercussions.
LBHS Drama Company performed the teen version of the play. “Teen Edition” usually means that it has been modified from the original version due to content. In this case, it was “modified for teen actors to perform for family audiences.” Even with the modification, the words “lover,” “bed,” “player,” girls playing seductive roles and glorification of alcohol use were all present.
As the Liberty Bell Drama Department proudly points out, a cohort of LBHS students did see the original in Seattle at the expense of Public School Funding Alliance and Methow Arts.
In their review of the play, the Seattle Times, which is not a conservative newspaper, says Hades is a “stand-in for capitalistic leaders, a king of oil and coal who preaches building a wall to preserve the freedom of those who work for him and keep out their enemies. Those enemies, in the eyes of Hades, are those living in poverty. He offers Eurydice a seductive deal, an escape from a cold, unyielding winter and an unending search for food and warmth caused by climate change. This musical…questions the freedom offered by capitalism and the way society condemns those who live in poverty.”
If this play was a one-off by the LBHS Drama Company, this review would probably laud the boldness of its director, but this is the fifth consecutive LBHS play that contains dystopian themes, sexual references, and/or a certain ideological viewpoint. Last spring’s “high school version” of Ride the Cyclone also contained controversial content.
Grayum likes to point out that it is the students that are choosing these plays, but with the consistency of themes over the years, it’s apparent that someone is steering this ship.
Grayum chooses plays that are shiny on the outside but have a dark underlay. Hoping for a change of scenery might be outside his comfort zone.
